Hi dahlings,
It's been tooo long, and I'm missing you all, not to mention I've been receiving plaintive pleas for more posts, and the Novel, well, what can I say but progress has been slow. Writing for you is so much more fun, so I simply gotta tell you about our antics of late and a fabulous local film company and concept.
Summer's knocking on our doors, so we're tentatively putting our big toes back in the early morning waters at the St James tidal pool, which regular readers will recall was a great cause of enjoyment for us at the beginning of the year and this blog. To catch the pool at high tide as the sun rises must rate as one of life's greatest thrills, and it's all for the asking (hefty local rates aside.)
On one of our sunrise sorties we were thrilled to reacquaint ourselves with some of our early summer swimming companions, all smiles, handshakes and reminders of names. There is such a shared sense of the joy of the intoxicating salt water and blue sky that unites outdoor swimmers, which seems to be the absolute antithesis to the antagonism and hellbent attitude of gym swimmers, who these days seem to wear viking helmets, hand fins and flippers (not to mention grim, very grim, expressions) to get them from one end of the pool to the other. St James is simply a representation of happiness to me. No lane rage here (see earlier blog posts.)
As we were drying ourselves off, a trio of camera wielding young folk arrived on the beach, and as it transpired, were a film crew looking to see what people in Cape Town were doing to enjoy their beautiful city. Enter Michael, Justine and Warren from Green Renaissance, a small local company focussing on eco friendly ventures to pay the bills, and watching Cape Town at play for their own edification and fun. And so we met and struck up conversation and friendship, and had fun sharing our feelings about our beloved Mother City.
A finer trio of young things you could not meet, and I silently(?) bemoaned the fact that life and opportunities in my formative years did not allow me to become a fledgling documentary maker. Aah, but theMischievous Fairy came to my rescue, and said, "Suzy Q, this is your opportunity to star in a swimsuit shoot instead." Kids, this ol' gal not quite dead in the water yet, and we were invited back later in the week to swim for the camera to seal the deal on the movie.
Requests aplenty I had for body doubles, but in the end I went cold turkey and braved the icy waters with Mr Suzy Q at my side. Who knows what the end results will reveal, (gulp!?) but it was such a fun little interlude. We so enjoyed meeting the innovative Green Renaissance team that we invited them home for breakfast (semi eco friendly - my fears that they were all raving herbivores were fortunately unfounded) and we had a fun filled morning.
But the message as conveyed by them was, Go Play!! Let's do it. We are fortunate enough to live in the most beautiful city in the world (it's official, as if we didn't know it already) so let's see the sights and celebrate her natural splendours. So as they say, yeah, let's go play...
Lotsa love,
Suzy Q (yeah, looks like I'm back!) xx
www.greenrenaissance.co.za
Can't stop me once I start kids, so this is the (censored) Tale of the Three Cinque Terrors on tour last month, and thanks again for bearing with me...
It was an unexpected and divine gift to return to a place I had loved so very much, and experience a feeling of coming home. A 28 hour journey consisting of three plane rides (read MANY airport hours) three taxi trips and two train changes with all our luggage ended with our arrival in the charming seaside town I'd recommended so enthusiastically to my friends to a deluge and dangerously dark skies, rivalled only by poor New York at the moment. My poor old heart did skip a few beats, and I prayed as the flash flood welcomed us that this wouldn't mean my life flashing before my eyes, as I had watched footage of last October's floods in the Cinque Terre with no small amount of trepidation.
However, fortune favours the brave, and whilst we were treated to seven kinds of weather, often on the same day, we had the most marvellous time imaginable. My friends, thankfully, loved everything about the town and terrain and people as much as I had previously, and good times were had by all. We walked, cycled, swam, ate, drank, laughed, gossiped and some of us (no names mentioned) flirted outrageously with the men we met, but it was all good, clean fun. Although, did I detect a tear in the dishy hotel manager's eye when he kindly brought our luggage down on the day of our departure!?
If Italy is the seat of civilization, why wasn't I born there? The pace of life in our little town moved to it's own gentle rhythm, mostly by bicycle. Locals cycled, walked and threw themselves into that alluring Ligurian Sea with gleeful abandon, when not shopping for their daily provisions. Yes, just enough for the day's meals, either at the little speciality shops turning out THE most delicious focaccias, pastas and antipastas, or the covered morning market for the occasional heavenly rotisserie chicken and locally produced cheeses and fresh veggies. And no kids, sorry to say, there was simply not enough time to do justice to all the gelatos, although we really tried! The soft lilt of Italian wafted up to my room at all hours, as did the scent of pine on our mountain hikes between the villages.The freedom to do just whatever we wanted, freed from the constraints of family life and responsibilities (which we all love so well) was equally intoxicating. It was a holiday made in heaven.
Despite the language barrier and being armed with my trusty phrase book marking me out as a tourist, I experienced nothing but kindness and courtesy. Struggling to carry my bike up some steps from the beach one day, a lovely young lady simply came to offer me a hand. Forgetting my purse when I nipped down to buy one of the irresistible riso salads for a light lunch from the excellent supermarket downstairs one day, the young cashier waved me away and said I could pay later.
The wine tasting we had booked at the local co-op was not only complementary, but a meal in itself with all the delicious breads, olives, anchovies and tapenades provided.
More than that, the spirit and joie de vivre of my friend's 77 year old mother (aka GG, the Glamorous Granny) were infectious and they both made for most enjoyable holiday companions. Youth is clearly all in the mind and a well preserved and exercised body. Yip, I'm hitting the gym in the morning.
Not only that, delighted as I am to have had such an overwhelming response to the return of Suzy Q (take a bow, and thank you all very, very much!) I'm signing up for Na-No-Wri-Mo, encouraged by your feedback to try to finish a book I started some time back. No pressure, just 50 000 words to be written in November. So let's hope afflatus is with me, and hope you will all be waiting for the Christmas Edition of Suzy Q in mid December - bumper edition I promise.
Till then, you take care of yourselves, keep me posted on your lives please, and hang in there, as I'll be back...
With love and thanks for all your support and encouragement,
Suzy (the ever wannabe writer) Q!
xx
Buon giorno one and all, and my apologies for not getting back to business sooner. The reasons/excuses are various, but I've heard you loud and clear (you beg too hard) so I'll fill you in...
I did indeed have a wonderful time in the Cinque Terre with fabulous company, but will do a posting on that tomorrow, and am safely home with my family. I hit the ground running on return, with a trip up the West Coast to take Miss SQ No 2 and her mates to their first official rock festival, the charmingly named Rocking the Daisies, now that they've come of age. Well, as usual I donned my unpaid chauffeur's cap, and became The Invisible Woman. The hype and conversations about what he said and she did or didn't do kept me entertained all the way, until we hit massive roadworks and heavy traffic along the badly timed stop-go system with many other wannabe rockers behaving en route in a manner which did not do their parents proud. The reality of a whole weekend trapped amongst so many drunken revellers started to sink slowly into the young ladies heads, and an uncertain silence fell over the car.
Poor said little car was soon caked in red dust and competing with the usual "I own the road" SUV's along the rough farm track to the festival. Granted it seemed to be very well organized, but my stress levels were quite high, and a nip at the wine co-op we'd passed earlier was looking rather tempting but for the long road home again. At the drop off point the fledgling rockers had to bail out pretty quickly, and did I detect a note of panic in their voices as they tried to avoid the arcs of male urine already in operation and wonder how they would find their friends with the tent, in the proverbial needle in a haystack?
They all seem to have survived and came home starving, dehydrated, exhausted but thankfully not sunburnt, with no express wishes to buy tickets for Synergy, the next up and coming rock fest. Still you never know, like labour pains, which seem to be forgotten, we all seem to go back again.
Thereafter, I fell foul of some dreaded lergy, no doubt the result of recycled airline bugs, and was laid low for a while, doubled with trouble from the dodgy knee. Sure, even though I celebrated another birthday while I was away this didn't make me feel THAT much older, did it!? Bearing in mind that I travelled with an almost octogenarian who put us 50 somethings through our paces there are absolutely no excuses for EVER complaining about age, so I'm as young as the sun.
I was, needless to say, very sad, and this is probably the main reason I haven't written for a while, to hear that my opera hopeful didn't pass his audition for the UCT Opera School. There seems to have been a misunderstanding or beurocratic bungle, or maybe he simply didn't make the grade (he had 'flu on the day of the audition) but, what can I say, I had such high hopes for him and hate to see his ambitions dashed, even though I've told him of my motto to "never say die."
But all that to say, hello again and thanks for your patience. Tales from the Three Cinque Terrors tomorrow...
With love,
Suzy Q xx
All packed and ready for the Cinque Terre, very excited but hoping that the weather is not going to be as wet as predicted.
There is something I want to share with you all before I leave, which has me very excited and hopeful. To cut a long story short I was in my local vida caffe one Sunday, the only person in the shop.
There I heard the most beautiful singing coming from behind the counter, so I chatted to the extremely pleasant young man who hails from the Eastern Cape. He told me of his dream to sing, which had never materialised. On being asked if he knew anything operatic (a long shot I reckoned) he came into the customer area and sang the most beautiful aria, full of passion and expression, which literally reduced me to tears.
Over the last month I have been hard at work, and have just had the good news that he is being granted an audition for a place at UCT Opera school next Friday 28th September at 1pm. (This just happens to be my birthday, so am hoping it will be very lucky day for him.)
So dear friends and gentle readers, I'm asking you all to say a little prayer for a young man who will be singing his heart out for a life changing opportunity...
With thanks and lots of love,
Ciao,
Suzy Q xx
SO, kids, I already know what you're all going to say, but really, no need to hate, it's not always like this, nor has it always been. I'm off on a little road trip with two of my best gal buddies, so won't be able to post while I'm away for the next fortnight. How all this happened so fast is anybody's guess, suffice to say that some unsuspecting friend called to ask my advice on the Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coast of Italy where we were lucky enough to have had our big family holiday last year, and before you could say, "Bob's your auntie" she and her mum had booked and invited me to join them. (Some sales gal your Suzy Q hey?)
Come the weekend, and we three shall be leaving our husbands, children and cares behind. It promises to be a fun filled time of swimming, hiking, laughing, and eating fabulous Italian food and sampling the local village wines. We have an apartment so will be able to cater for ourselves with the freshest of ingredients from the little local deli and the mind blowing daily market where the most beautiful fruits and veggies and delectable buffalo mozzarellas and salamis are in tempting profusion. Pick 'n' Pay move over, why can't shopping for food always be so much fun?
We all have a few causes for concern, mostly to do with wine and men, contemplating having our aging (I swear I never once said "sagging") bottoms pinched at least once by those hunky Italian stallions, but my major concern is that we might just die laughing as I think we are going to have so much fun. What a wonderful opportunity for dear old friends who get together too seldom to have the chance to yak and yak without responsibilities and the usual distractions.
The Cinque Terre is a linked group of five picturesque villages along the cliffs above the Ligurian Sea, where I have had the most delightful swims of my life. There are walks of varying degrees of difficulty through vineyards and olive groves, offering the most spectacular sea views. Each village produces it's own wine, so we should be able to taste the odd one along the way, and luckily there is an excellent train service should we fall into bad company or a wine vat.
All this to say, I'll soon be on my way, once I've stocked the larder and done the usual detailed list of what needs to be done in my absence which will be totally ignored, and will be thinking of you all as we wend our merry way through the Cinque Terre. Please bear with me (forgive me?) and please please please don't forget me. I really do value all your loyal support and feedback so much. You never know, I may just be able to access an Internet Cafe I can manage to use to give you a holiday broadcast, otherwise I'll be back in the first week of October with all the stories and more, or does what happen on tour stay on tour!?
I've had fab team t-shirts printed for a laugh, and had such fun organizing and designing them with Kevin and Rusty from ReproClinic at the Valyland Centre in Fish Hoek. Call 021-7823750 if you need any reproduction work done for great art advice, value and service or email:print@reproclinic.co.za
Ciao bellissimo, Suzy Q (of The Three Cinque Terrors!) xx
I think I'm a dying breed, for I cannot put a cup of tea on a tray without laying a tray cloth there first. The trays I see nowadays are all laminated and infrequently used, whereas for me there is a a certain romanticism about the humble tray. Nothing like being served a cup of tea on the old kitchen tray by a loving family member with a favourite, but faded old tray cloth to remind one of day's gone by, or even better, a flute of bubbles on the white damask atop the shiny silver tray on a high day. We also have the "sick tray", a genuine relic rescued from my training hospital when it was refurbished, and stripped down to it's original wood with retractable legs so the patient can eat properly propped up in bed. Touch wood it hasn't been used much lately, but I think the little Miss SQ's sometimes used to feign illness for the privilege of of being thus spoilt. That was also the perfect opportunity to lay out bright and cheerful cloths, often from holidays, to cheer the patient into eating their boiled egg with soldiers.
My love of tray cloths probably started when I was a girl, however long ago that might have been, when we were routinely taught the rudiments of needlework. Lazy daisies were our staple, using needles called 'crewel' somewhat akin to our needlework mistress we reckoned. Funny to think in these days of gender equality that girls were assigned to the fine motor skills of needlework, whilst the lads got to bash nails into bits of wood in the name of woodwork, read into that what you will.
This got me to thinking of lazy daisies and the fun we had fine tuning our sewing skills in my schooldays. Sadly, like PT, these subjects seem to have been dropped from the curriculum, and whilst I have heard lots of excuses, I really can't understand why this should be so. Methinks too many administrative hassles for the teachers, but somebody must have heard Suzy Q moaning as PT at least is being reintroduced. Hooray, here's to the health of the younger generation.
Gotta love and give thanks to the special pre-school teachers my daughters were fortunate enough to have, whose inspired Mother's Day gifts remain amongst my greatest treasures. I'm speaking of course of tray cloths with potato, hand and leaf prints as well as primitive self images. As somebody who has just had a red letter day and experienced a life defining moment by paying our last school bill ever (hopefully) these sentimental treasures from pre-school days are a stark reminder of how fast the years have flown and how my babies have grown.
When I tell them how I have a few small things (including some of these charming relics from pre-school) stashed away for their bottom drawers, they howl with derision. They most certainly won't be scrimping and saving to set up house with a few rudimentary kitchen utensils, but will rather be buying their own penthouse apartments with the careers they have planned for themselves. Let's hope so.
I wonder what happened to the tray cloths I made with my first attempts at lazy daisies though? How I wish I could lay my hands on one of those now...
Your, ever sentimental,
Suzy Q
Hi again and please forgive delays in writing about our short stay at Rocherpan when we went up the West Coast to see the flowers last week - just been unbelievably busy, but here we go.
The road to Rocherpan was littered with temptations, as you may have gathered from my second last blog post, all good fun and no complaints, leaving me with yet another proudly South African feeling. Gotta love this beautiful country of ours and all the diverse people to which she's given rise.
www.capenature.co.za
We finally arrived safely, TG as that road seems to have quite a bad reputation, after passing through Velddrif and all the little holiday village developments along the way.Winona, the camp manageress was on hand to welcome us warmly and give us the camp drill. Somewhat mistakenly (mine) I had imagined us to be residing in a floral reserve, but Rocherpan is actually more famous for it's birds, especially the endangered Black Oystercatcher and is also a marine protection area.
No worries, we simply love being out in the country and enjoying Mother Nature in her purest form and loved the view of the sunset over the vlei with all the attendant birdlife. The cottages were a true delight in design and aesthetism as designed by architect Justin Cooke. My retirement home dream come true. Clean lines, economical use of space, eco friendly, and rather sexy in terms of tiling and fittings. Not so great if personal privacy is a priority however. As an "old married couple" we coped just fine, but had we shared the cottage with another couple or our teenage children, I doubt it would have worked, as the two beds are back to back with a small half screen, and the cute little bathroom is doorless with very little recess even for the dung fuelled loo. Hmm...?
Everything else was gorgeous, with a little terrace for a braai, though it beats me why they don't lay on just a little bit of wood, or even a few courtesy tea bags for your arrival, specially as many visitors are foreign tourists who don't have a kitchen cupboard to raid for a visit. The peace and privacy were sublime, to a point, as the four cottages are rather close to the road and during the night we could hear all the trucks thundering by. Why, when there is a whole nature reserve, are they situated there, we wondered but I am sure there are good reasons. I have infinite praise for Cape Nature and all the wonderful work they do, but I do have to query why there is a question called "Culture" on the entry form, which had already been filled in as "White" for us. Colour, my dear ones, should not be an issue or even a question within our new democracy. Would a Chinese person be required to call themselves "yellow" for heaven's sakes? C'mon, let's all be citizens of south Africa, please.
Come the beautiful morning dawning, woken by birdsong, we made our way down to the beach by car via the two bird hides. A lovely walk over the dunes brought us to one of those deliciously deserted beaches you see only in movies, but for once I was too tjoeps to swim there alone. We had to pack up to head back to the office anyway, with the excited intention of stopping in at Postberg as it was such a sunny, perfect flower viewing day. This was, after all, the reason for our sortie up the coast was it not?
As we headed over the hill towards Postberg, Mr SQ let out an expletive, and silly old me, I thought he was exclaiming at the sight of the fields of daisies we anticipated viewing. Alas and alack, it was the road filled with a long line of cars queueing to get entrance to the reserve. Somebody had obviously blabbed (gosh these blogs can be dangerous!) that the flowers were so fabulous this year, that hordes of day trippers had descended en masse, so we took a rain check and headed back to the school run instead.
Oh well, we had had a most enjoyable time, and had been fortunate enough to enter the reserve previously without waiting in line for an hour, only to sit bumper to bumper all the way through the flowers. I think I'm going to try to do the Postberg Walking Trail next year - any takers...?
www.sanparks.org
Lotsa love,
Suzy Q
